The Rector of St. Marks

There was a heavy shower the night succeeding the picnic and the

morning following was as balmy and bright as June mornings are wont to

be after a fall of rain. They were always early risers at the

farmhouse, but this morning Anna, who had slept but little, arose

earlier than usual and, leaning from the window to inhale the bracing

air and gather a bunch of roses fresh with the glittering raindrops,

she felt her spirits grow lighter and wondered at her discomposure of

the previous day. Particularly was she grieved that she should have

harbored a feeling of bitterness toward Lucy Harcourt, who was not to

blame for having won the love she had been foolish enough to covet.

"He knew her first," she said, "and if he has since been pleased with

me, the sight of her has won him back to his allegiance, and it is

right. She is a pretty creature, but strangely unsuited, I fear, to be

his wife," and then, as she remembered Lucy's wish to go with her when

next she visited the poor, she said: "I will take her to see the Widow Hobbs. That will give her some idea

of the duties which will devolve upon her as a rector's wife. I can go

directly there from Prospect Hill, where, I suppose, I must call with

Aunt Meredith."

Anna made herself believe that in doing this she was acting only from

a magnanimous desire to fit Lucy for her work, if, indeed, she was to

be Arthur's wife--that in taking the mantle from her own shoulders,

and wrapping it around her rival, she was doing a most amiable deed,

when down in her inmost heart, where the tempter had put it, there was

an unrecognized wish to see how the little dainty girl would shrink

from the miserable abode, and recoil from the touch of the little,

dirty hands which were sure to be laid upon her dress if the children

were at home, and she waited a little impatiently to start on her

errand of mercy.

It was four o'clock when, with her aunt, she arrived at Colonel

Hetherton's and found the family assembled upon the broad piazza, the

doctor dutifully holding the skein of worsted from which Miss Fanny

was crocheting, and Lucy playing with a kitten, whose movements were

scarcely more graceful than her own, as she sprang up and ran to

welcome Anna.

"Oh, yes, I am delighted to go with you. Pray let us start at once,"

she exclaimed, when, after a few moments of conversation, Anna told

where she was going.

Lucy was very gayly dressed, enough so for a party, Anna thought,

smiling to herself as she imagined the startling effect the white

muslin and bright plaid ribbons would have upon the inmates of the

shanty where they were going. There was a remonstrance from Mrs.

Hetherton against her niece's walking so far, and Mrs. Meredith

suggested that they should ride, but to this Lucy objected. She meant

to take Anna's place among the poor when she was gone, she said, and

how was she ever to do it if she could not walk such a little way as

that? Anna, too, was averse to riding and she felt a kind of grim

satisfaction when, after a time, the little figure, which at first had

skipped along ahead with all the airiness of a bird, began to lag, and

even pant for breath, as the way grew steeper and the path more stony

and rough. Anna's evil spirit was in the ascendant that afternoon,

steeling her heart against Lucy's doleful exclamations, as one after

another her delicate slippers were torn, and the sharp thistles, of

which the path was full, penetrated to her soft flesh. Straight and

unbending as a young Indian, Anna walked on, shutting her ears against

the sighs of weariness which reached them from time to time. But when

there came a half sobbing cry of actual pain, she stopped suddenly and

turned towards Lucy, whose breath came gaspingly, and whose cheeks

were almost purple with the exertion she had made.